Mailbox

Well... I asked Cameron to get me the mail and...

... he explained that the package was stuck so he needed to wiggle the box and it was still stuck when he used two hands and... at least I stopped him before he brought the whole post and mailbox into the house!

Sea Ranch

I love this place!  I've been visiting since I was a little kid and just speaks to a place of deep happiness within me :)  So, some pictures of our latest family vacation along with the latest cute antics!

• "You seem to be doing that through a fit of oomphs."  (Andrew kept hugging me while I was talking.)

• after my birthday breakfast in bed, "Want a Lego carrot? Remember this is my only Lego carrot.  It's a memory of me."

• singing the birthday song with a formal, "dear mother"

• providing an hour-long running stream of reading the road signs including pronouncing MPH as "mufup"

• commenting on the restaurant soup, "They made it just right for my standards! If I had twenty bowls of it, I'd eat it all!"

• picking up my use of "dear" for Andrew and using it complete with an exasperated tone whenever his dad is doing something silly, "Deeeeeear, stop tickling me!"

• informing me, "I think taxes should be a dollar and there are a lot of people so that should be enough."

• responding to his dad's metaphor that a good essay was like the ceiling in that you can't see the seems with, "You can't just make it all endless sentence with ands and stuff!"  (Guess he got the teaching about run on sentences and he did, eventually, get the point about transitions too!)

And a joke that Andrew found that had me really laughing:

Descartes walks into bar
The bar tender says, "Want a beer?"
Descartes says, "I think not."
Poof.  He vanishes! 

Family meeting: Latest Application

So, what's the latest challenge we've tackled with our family meetings?  I'm sure we're the only ones who have ever found a child's attention wandering during teaching!  Ya, so all of you that always keep your children's undivided attention can just skip this post, but for the remainder who have joined me in this challenge, this may be of some interest!

My husband is helping our son with writing and with the more complex math problems that come home.  I'm the helper for everything else.  (My son has learned how to tackle the first round of homework independently, so he only needs me for checking and when he gets stuck.)  So, we're both sitting down to help him with a thinking challenge and finding... 
he's looking at a hang nail
he's toppling off the stool
he's repeating what we say without understanding
he's taking every action to avoid thinking possible.
Naturally, this fills his parents with patience and warm fuzzies as they try to help him learn and spend 3/4 of their time in focus-assistance.

Family Meeting!

My husband and I faced the same challenge, we wanted to help him learn but we didn't want to waste our time.  Our son heard our problem and shared his need to move but also not be distracted.  We both presented the issues as problems for us to fix together without name calling or accusatory tones.  We came up with different ideas for each of us.  I was willing to allow one minute breaks per ten minutes, because that wouldn't take too much of my time. However, my kiddo's work with his dad requires at least a half hour of focus.  So, we came up with our plan.

Before my husband starts teaching, our son will use the bathroom, eat, and make sure that he's ready to focus for 30-40 minutes.
Before my kiddo calls me for help, he'll make sure he's ready to focus.  I'll wait for one minute while he takes a break every ten minutes and he'll take longer breaks after finishing any given task.

Success?

We've been at it for a week and there's a definite improvement.  He's still been known to wander over to a couch or roll off a shelf, but he responds to a quick reminder and we knew this would be a process!  

Our family during a recent family vacation... notice my kiddo's foot sticking out, but there was no way he'd bring his face forward into the light!  Oh well, we pick our battles :)

Family Meetings

There are a huge number of ways to do a family meeting, but the general goal is for each family member to be able to be part of the process of making the family run smoothly.  For a long time, we just discussed issues as a family when they came up and it worked.  My kiddo got the feel of rational conversations to address anything that wasn't working well.  He got used to sharing his ideas and learning to listen to the ideas of the other family members too.  About a year ago, we decided to designate a regular time each week when we'd have a family meeting.  This allowed us to follow up on old business, bring up new issues, and make sure that we were all happy with the way we were interacting.

We start our family meetings with compliments.  Each person gives each of the other family members a compliment.  Not only does this help us focus on the positive, it also helps us recall times during the week when we admired each other.  About six months ago, I was thinking about the growth vs. fixed mentality* and decided to add one more thing to this intro, a mistake.  So, each person also shares a mistake that they've made during the week and what they've learned from that experience.  The goal here is to make mistakes OK and recognize them as part of the learning process.  I want my kiddo especially to see how common it is for grown ups to make mistakes and how the important thing is how we respond to those opportunities.

Once we've all handled sharing our compliments and mistake, we review old business.  That basically involves pulling out the sheet of topics from the last meeting and seeing if the decisions worked or need to be tweaked in any way.  It also includes updates on status if one person was trying to make something happen.  For example, I brought up my kiddo getting a bit better at swimming to reach a level of safety that would serve him well.  We talked about the idea and then the lessons and timing and came up with a plan that made everyone happy.  I went off to do the research.  In the next meeting, I reported back that our best option was not open during the fall, but would reopen in March (check, item placed into my Getting Things Done system and out of the family meeting queue).  If old items include a new plan like a homework routine without nagging, we see if it worked and if everyone is happy or if more tweaks are needed.  These conversations remain very open and focused on solving a shared problem of the family.  My kiddo learned very early on that we don't call names in this family so even lively arguments about best options don't involve insults.

Finally, we open up the floor to any new family business.  Has someone been noticing that it's too loud to get to sleep or the socks never seem to wind up in the laundry bin or there isn't enough computer time?  We talk about whatever a family member is experiencing as a problem and tackle the best next actions we can take to make the situation better.

So... family meetings?  Do you have them?  Do you have any interesting tweaks that you've added like my mistake addition?  I must say that we've had some of the best times sharing mistakes, laughing, and clarifying what we've learned!  In the comments, I'd love to hear what has worked for you!

* The idea here is that a fixed mindset sees intelligence/skill as something fixed i.e. I'm smart/skilled or dumb/clumsy.  In this view, failing at something means that you're dumb or just bad at it so kids don't try.  They want to succeed at get the smart/skilled label.  The growth mindset sees intelligence/skill as something responsive to effort i.e. I'm smart because I worked hard or skilled because I practiced.  In this view, failing is part of the process of getting smarter and more skilled.  It's expected, normal, and shows you're doing something right because you're trying something where you didn't know the answer or skill already.  Of course, talent is a factor, but even a prodigy needs to practice and work hard to learn.  The growth mindset reflects the reality of how people learn.

Nine Years Old

My sweet child has turned nine!  This is a mostly cute antics update, but it's worth noting that he's growing in so many ways.  While still socially/emotionally young, he's growing and learning at his own pace... this is definitely a kiddo who marches to the beat of his own drummer and, while challenging, that can be really delightful :)
... and the antics:

• insisting that I was being "too literal!  (Oh, the irony!)

• deciding to lift the silent treatment on me (which I hadn't noticed was placed) because I started laughing about making the same mistake that he had just made.  (He started reading comics while listening to history class and was thoroughly miffed when I stopped playing the class.  He was apparently giving me the silent treatment while he continued to read comics.  Then I started laughing because I had tried to write an email and realized I'd missed the last minute of the high school history class (which I listen to) so I had just done the exact same thing (tried to focus on two things that needed full attention at the same time).  Apparently, admitting my mistake and finding it funny earned me suspension of the sentence... he continued to read quietly though after telling me that he'd canceled my punishment.  I also hopefully modeled that it's a pretty easy mistake to rectify by replaying the last minute of the class recording... I often get major push back with that.)

• when listening to me chat with my mom about the psychologist's praise of me, she asked him if he agreed and he answered, "It's a long way of saying that, but Yes."

• spelling "social" shoshol

• playing a game where we made up a funny phrase with a given set of letters, for W,N,C he came up with "what a nutty Cleisthenes" (He does like him though!)

• saying 9 million flies got into our house and then adding "I'm over exaggerating!"

• opening the door to the empty classroom and sing songing like in Animaniacs, "Hello classroom!"

• correcting me when I reminded him that Wednesdays are half days, "No, they're minus two days!"  (The day lasts two hours less, not precisely half of the usual day.)

• insisting "I didn't fall for the trick." (I was mentioning how video games can trick kids into expecting rewards after a little work because that's how they're designed, but real life often requires lots of hard work before a reward.  He was adamant that he wasn't tricked… we'll see :) )

• being so overly eager to do his chores that he brought in the trash cans before the garbage truck came!

• describing for me extensive details about "fief cats" (After a half hour of describing these cats in his game, I wondered and asked him if he meant "thief". He'll still get that sound mispronounced and for the first time, he seemed to actually want to correct the problem.)

• responding to my mom's story of seeing a great white shark while scuba diving with, "You're a very risky woman!"

• calling shivers "personal earthquakes"

• when Daddy answered a question with "hmmm", Cameron said, "Give up the noncommittals and give me a committal answer."

Enjoying his chocolate sundae as a birthday breakfast :)

Found Some Awesome Table-side

I have a passion for table-side restaurants because it just feels so special and sparkly :)  I am thrilled to have finally found a place here that offers me this kind of delight!

Cute antics catch up:

Picking Lord Nelson for himself as a historical character he'd like to be and then proclaiming me "Joan of Arc"… I commented about my thoughts on that idea and then he chose "Marie Antoinette"… not sounding much better and then his dear father piped up "Helen of Troy"… well, that's not so bad (depending on which ending you pick)!

"Mom, go to the bathroom!" x 10 repetitions.  He was upset because I wouldn't let him climb on me because I needed to pee (but wanted to hear the rest of a story Andrew was telling me).  The irony of hearing that from him after all the hundreds of times he'd done the antsy dance and refused to use the bathroom… Andrew and I got a good laugh!

When the dishwasher detergent cake had part of the center fall out, he laughed "Oh, how humorous!"

Putting a sign on his door reminding himself to wear pajamas (If he wears clothes to bed, they count as pajamas and he needs to change in the morning.  He hates changing from clothes into clothes and clearly prefers having worn pajamas just so he can avoid that trial.  He had one morning of distress because he'd fallen asleep in his clothes and didn't want to change... that was the same morning he tried to wear his pants inside out when he finally did change!  I don't fight over backwards, but inside out is too much!)  

"I like how progressive Dad is in his work." (He clarified that he meant Andrew was making progress.)

considering trying a family canoe again, "Sure, I'm not as grouchy as I was in the past."

Cameron's homework that he typed and picked out the pictures for someone he admires and his family.

I picked .Lord Nelson .because he was very good at defending  England from Napoleon.                

This is me with my mom and dad.I love my dad because he's strong and he works hard.I love my mom's snuggling and niceness.

And... off to school

I now have a third grader who has survived the first two and half days of school without major incident, yay!  I really like what I've heard so far about the efforts to keep him challenged in the classroom, so now we'll see how all the nice words play out in action.  It's been an awesome start :)

Cute antics:

• using the intonation of Animaniacs' "Hello nurse" to greet me, "Hello person!"  

• getting all profound when I told him I was feeling sad over a wilting rose given by my sister because I really wanted it to be a plant that lives a long time… he said contemplatively, "Well, people face sadnesses in life."

• accidentally giving himself a giant hicky on each arm

• when Andrew said he would "possibly" have time to play games, Cameron asked, "Can you move your possibly to something in my favor?"

• flooding the sink and then asking in a curious manner, as he cleaned the water up from the floor and cabinet, "Why did I have to flood the sink?"
(Conversations on learning are getting more and more common around here.)

• setting a new record in his spontaneous need to literally run off energy; he did 111 laps around the house.

• poking at my foot and saying, "I'm feeling the intricate-ness of your foot!"

• telling his psychologist, "If I was really playing [chess], I'd clobber you." 

• "If I saw a tsunami, I'd say 'Yaaaaaa and run like heck."

• singing to the Pirates of Penzance tune, "Take hugs, take any hug, take any hug, take mine." (…and giving me an awesome hug.  Very cool!)

• conversation:
Mom: Tell Dad what you did to make the macaroni with me
Cameron: Things!
Andrew: Things?
Cameron: Things, he said vaguely  (speaking of himself in third person)

History go fish is up to over sixty pairs and he still begs to play!

"Mommy School" Summary

As we draw to a close of the summer, we near the end of this summer's session of "Mommy School" (Cameron's term for his learning with me over the summer).  We've had a particularly positive experience and again learned more about how to work together and how to adapt learning methods so that we're both enjoying ourselves.  I think the biggest challenge was when he would want to be right so much that he'd argue about something like an algebraic fact.  He'd get so upset and insist that, for example, -2+(-3) = 1.  We did all sorts of things to help work around this block and were eventually successful, as usual, once he's learned something, he insists it's a "piece of cake".

Writing
The biggest challenge for him academically and we made tons of progress.  I offered choices at the beginning of the summer, and, we still weren't finding something that he was eager about doing.  My first big break through was suggesting he write me lego instructions for how to build something.  It worked beautifully!  He was interested and he learned about being precise and he had some enjoyment.  We found he was getting to dislike it more and more though as it just seemed too long to him, so we decreased the number of sentences and focused on writing them with particularly good handwriting.  Finally, three weeks ago, he was resisting again and we tried decreasing amount of writing to learn cursive.  Wow, he did his first run through the cursive alphabet the first week and has been writing 40 cursive words each day for the last two weeks and his writing is already better than his print!  He likes the idea of being able to write faster :)  Also, throughout the summer, he's been doing a typing program and getting faster and faster with that!  So, with cursive and typing, we're working on the physical difficulties of writing and by writing each day, he's getting better at expressing more detailed ideas.  It's still the subject he puts last each day, but he's improving!

History
We completed both the Ancient (started well before the summer) and the European History at our House classes this summer.  Considering how much writing is a challenge for him, I took dictation for the tests and review sheets, but he did really well on them (especially considering he moves so much when listening and sings to himself often so that it's hard to imagine he's listening).  We're still keeping the knowledge current through my use of History Go Fish and History Taboo.  To finish off the summer, we're listening to some of the History Through Art classes which he skipped during the first listening because he wanted to hear what happened next in the story.  We also completed a college course in mythology lent by my dad which was lots of fun!

Math
It's gone through many different implementations, but over the summer, Cameron has practiced math each weekday and learned or cemented his knowledge of: all basic arithmetic (including long division and multi-digit multiplication), fractions (including finding a common denominator), decimal word problems, exponents, square / cube roots, negative numbers, and basic algebra.   While he often doesn't remember the correct way of saying what he's doing, he understands these manipulations of numbers and seems to really zoom through these subjects.  He does have an investment in doing well and will sometimes reject something new as a threat to his view of "I'm good at math."  We work on developing that growth mentality i.e. finding something challenging is good, it's the way it should be and part of learning something new, not a threat to his current skills.  For the last three weeks of the summer, I finished up introducing new material and had him practice mixed arithmetic drills so that he could brush up on quickly getting responses to those questions.  (I was noticing that he'd occasionally get stuck for ten seconds on an arithmetic question and need to figure it out instead of having it memorized.)

A little older picture from when we first started algebraic equations… now he doesn't mind if the variable is squared or cubed and, yes, he does have pants on, but he rarely makes it through the homeschool day without taking off his shirt.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with our summer experience.  We were really flexible and listened to each other and he grew a great deal.  Reading isn't on our list because I just do that a bunch naturally as does he.   He's always been at least three or four years ahead in reading (started reading before age three due to hyperlexia) and I've found any measurement or even tracking of reading tends to rapidly turn him off.  (I fill out the occasional request from school for a reading log for him without letting him know because his motivation gets so drastically reduced if he hears about this.)  I'll definitely take advantage of this flexible approach in the future to keep us enjoying learning together!

Creation Concoctions

My kiddo likes to create concoctions of various foods and I'm all for him making his own food, as long as he eats it.  This latest was particularly questionable, but it was devoured so... add quirky tastes to all the other quirks of my delightful kid!
Voila! Bananas and raisins covered in ketchup and pimentos and olives and surrounded by cheese

Cute antics catch up:

• getting this very grand, announcer voice and making official declarations of the obvious, such as "I dub thee reader" when I'm about to read to him or "You are exiled to the shower" when I'm going to take a shower.

• while practicing cursive and catching his own mistake, "I better make my oops be a good oops!"

• giving me a good laugh when my timer went off for us to watch the Mars landing live… Cameron jumped up and opened the door to go out on the deck :)  (Um, a wee bit too far to view with the naked eye)

 • while we were rough housing and I was pretending to eat different meat from Cameron's body he told me, "You can have some bottom meat, too!"

• responding to his history teacher saying, "He [Napoleon] was the greatest land power and Britain was the greatest naval power." with, "Just like Athens and Sparta!"  (I just love this finding parallels!  When I came down in the morning, he'd created a huge, lego ship... starting his navy.)

• surprising me by coming up to me and scratching my back for the first time and then declaring "That should get me out of a few years of purgatory!"  (That's what you get if a kid learns about indulgences as "get out of purgatory free (cards)" which infuriated Martin Luther into writing his 95 theses!)

• recalling his Anne of Green Gables knowledge, he remarked on a fly's death that it was a "romantic way to die for a fly" and then told in detail how he was using the literary reference (in which a mouse drowns in sauce and Anne thinks it's a romantic way to die).

• dictating this email:
Note from Cameron to Dad
I want to fix this and I don't want you to yell and have this be a big disaster, so please tell me how I can fix it.  I didn't realize how hard the brass was on the door.
Bye, your faithful child,
Cameron
(Downstairs bathroom door swung too hard so the lock piece on the handle indented the wall.  It was really an accident waiting to happen because there was no door stop and it is a small dent too.  We'll just place a wall door stop.  We already ordered it together, so Cameron is fixing the problem by paying the few dollars.)

Fencing!

How cool that my kiddo is getting into fencing!  Tonight, he followed his Dad and watched an adult class too!  I'll append Cameron's dictated report on the experience!  Here are a couple pics and the latest cute antics too.

Cute antics:

• doing division with decimals, "Seven into zero? Zero.   Seven into dot?  Dot!"  (The problem was 7 divided by 0.021489)

• requesting extra reading time by leaving me a note on my pillow, "Extra time by Cameron"

• responding to my question about how he figures out negative number equations with, "I usually just look it up in the math dictionary and it gives me the answer."  (When I asked where that was, he pointed to his head.  He definitely thinks differently!)

• when I was explaining the word "distain" I used the example of Poobah in the Mikado and he chuckled, "The patricians had distain for the plebeians in Rome!"  (Ya, he's got the idea... he particularly liked the story of the two plaebian secessions).


Daddy Fencing
by Cameron

Dad and I walked into the Fencing place.  When we arrived, in the waiting room, there was a teacher teaching another class of Saber fencing.  It was the same teacher that I have.   Sabers have a bigger guard with a metal thing around the grip.  Saber fencing is more slashing than poking.  

We were a little early.  Eventually, Dad sat down and said, "I'll let you play a little bit." and handed me his phone.  I did a little bit of Trenches.  That's a video game meant for the phone but can be played on the iPad.  Then I played a kind of technology Cut the Rope, there are a lot more things to make the ball move to different places.  I played that until it was time for Daddy's fencing to start.

First, I'll talk about what I was doing during the lesson and then I'll talk about what Dad was doing.  First, I watched Dad standing on the other end of the wall, just looking and thinking this isn't very interesting.  When I overheard someone saying that you could hop in fencing.  Then I got up and practiced a hop in fencing.  Then I got multiple temptations to climb onto the top of the wall and lie down.  There's a wall between where the fencing action is and where the waiting room is.  It's not a very tall wall.  Eventually, I did climb and faced forward.  It made me feel a tiny bit like a tiger resting in the shade.  Then I was looking and thinking, "Oh, Dad exchanged a play with her and I was like, Woah, her hair is kind of like a man's."  It was yellow, but kind of big, pushed back with a little front and a lot at the back, everything was pushed back.  Dad taught her a few moves like an under slope which I immediately went and practiced.  You dip under and pick up the enemy blade and then immediately lunge, immediately extend and you automatically poke them and bend the sword.  Foils are supposed to bend and they must have been very handy long swords.  It is a kind of long sword.  Soon after that, I learned you should point your blade directly at your enemy instead of diagonally at your enemy's head.  Then one of the teachers told me to get off the wall and I did.  Then it started to get darker and darker and darker outside and I got boreder and boreder and boredor inside.  Dad was probably having a lot of fun.  Until 1,999,999 years passed and then Dad finally came out and said we could go and fencing was still going on.  

That was only my part and I'm not really sure how to kind of put myself in Dad's perspective.  Dad kept trying to teach his opponent a bunch of things until they switched and they started playing with other players until finally I didn't notice him anymore and started looking off and thinking about beeping little things on the opposite of the gym.  There were little cords connected to suits for fencing for a score.  Dad was the one who pulled off the little jump thing, the hop.

Overall, I thought it was pretty boring and a waste of time.  At least I got to play a little bit of video games before.  I learned some things that I might value in the future.  Fencing at home with Daddy is more fun.